Valorant

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 paired with the Intel Arc B370 delivers a surprisingly capable Valorant experience, particularly at 1080p, but the data reveals a strict ceiling that competitive players will want to respect. The combination ranks in the 8th percentile of all tested combos, indicating that while frame rates are playable, this pairing is far from the top tier for this esports title. The measured results show a clear hierarchy: Low settings are the only way to unlock the full potential of the CPU, while higher presets quickly shift the bottleneck to the GPU, which is notably underpowered relative to its processor partner.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data is unequivocal about the best settings preset for this combo: Low. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 299 FPS, a staggering 59.9% higher than the Medium preset’s 197 FPS and 68.1% higher than High’s 187 FPS. This massive jump is not a minor tweak; it is the difference between a fluid competitive experience and one that leaves performance on the table. The Low preset is the only setting tier that allows the Ryzen 5 3600’s six Zen 2 cores to stretch their legs, suggesting the CPU is the primary driver of performance at this setting.

For players who cannot tolerate the visual sacrifices of Low, Medium is the only viable alternative. At 1080p, Medium produces 197 FPS, which is still respectable, but it represents a significant 34.1% drop from Low. The High preset at 187 FPS is only 5.1% slower than Medium, which is a minor difference, but it still falls short of the 200 FPS threshold that many competitive players target. The Ultra preset is the worst choice, yielding just 178 FPS at 1080p, which is 40.5% slower than Low. The data shows diminishing returns: the visual quality gains from Medium to Ultra are marginal, but the FPS cost is substantial.

At 2560x1440, the pattern repeats with lower absolute numbers. Low delivers 255 FPS, which is still excellent for a 1440p panel, but Medium drops to 168 FPS, a 34.1% reduction. High and Ultra follow at 160 FPS and 152 FPS, respectively. The 4K data reinforces the recommendation: Low at 204 FPS is the only preset that breaks past 200 FPS, while Medium, High, and Ultra all cluster between 122 FPS and 134 FPS. The verdict is clear: for this hardware pairing, the Low preset is the only setting that consistently maximizes the frame rate headroom, and it should be the default choice for any player prioritizing competitive performance over visual fidelity.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and Intel Arc B370 ranks 2645th out of 2883 tested combos in Valorant. This places it in the bottom 8.3% of all systems tested, which is a poor showing for a title that is typically not demanding on high-end hardware. The ranking is a direct consequence of the GPU’s severe limitations; the Arc B370’s percentile versus all GPUs sits at just 5%, meaning it outperforms only 5% of the graphics cards in the database. The CPU is comparatively strong, with the Ryzen 5 3600 sitting in the 71st percentile of all CPUs, but this pairing forces the weaker component to dominate the outcome.

The nearest rivals for the GPU provide context for the bottleneck. The Arc B370 scores 1184 in the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 test, which is virtually identical to the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 (1186, delta of -0.2%) and the ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1190, delta of -0.5%). It is also within 1.4% of the AMD FirePro M2000 (1168). These are all legacy or low-end parts, confirming that the Arc B370 is operating in a performance tier that is over a decade old. The CPU’s nearest rivals show a different story; the Ryzen 5 3600’s average benchmark score of 17035 is within 0.2% of the Intel Core i7-1260P (17007) and the AMD EPYC 7742 (16998), and it is just 0.2% behind the Intel Core i5-11400 (17067). This indicates the CPU is holding its own against much newer or more expensive parts.

The combo’s low ranking is not a reflection of the CPU’s ability to process the game’s logic, but rather the GPU’s inability to render frames quickly enough. The data shows that the FPS scales dramatically with settings, which is a classic symptom of a GPU bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the system performs well above the 250 FPS mark, but at 4K Ultra, it falls to 122 FPS. This 59.2% drop across resolution and settings confirms that the Arc B370 is the limiting factor, and any upgrade path would need to focus on the graphics card to improve this combo’s rank.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B370 is the decisive component in this pairing, and its specifications explain the measured results. It is an integrated graphics processor (IGP) built on Intel’s 3nm process, with a base clock of 300 MHz and a boost clock of 2400 MHz. The GPU features 1280 shading units, 40 texture mapping units, and 20 raster output pipelines, along with 10 ray tracing cores. Its raw compute power is rated at 6.144 TFLOPS for FP32 and 12.29 TFLOPS for FP16, with a pixel rate of 48.00 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 96.00 GTexel/s. The TDP is a mere 25 W, which is extraordinarily low and explains why it is an IGP rather than a discrete card.

The most critical specification is the memory configuration: the Arc B370 uses System Shared memory, meaning it has no dedicated VRAM. The memory bus width is also System Shared, and the bandwidth is listed as System Dependent. This is a fundamental disadvantage for a game like Valorant, which, while not VRAM-heavy, still requires consistent memory bandwidth for texture streaming and frame buffering. The lack of dedicated VRAM means the GPU must contend with the system’s DDR4 memory, which is shared with the CPU. This contention is a likely cause of the performance collapse at higher settings, where the GPU needs more memory bandwidth than the shared bus can provide.

The GPU’s benchmark score of 1184 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 places it in the 5th percentile of all GPUs, with nearest rivals being the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 and ATI Radeon HD 5770. These comparisons are damning; they show the Arc B370 is performing at a level comparable to entry-level discrete GPUs from over a decade ago. In Valorant, this translates to a hard limit on frame rates. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the GPU can push 299 FPS, but this number drops to 122 FPS at 4K Ultra. The GPU’s 20 ROPs are particularly low, which limits pixel fill rate and directly impacts performance at higher resolutions. The pixel rate of 48.00 GPixel/s is the ceiling for how many pixels can be output, and at 4K (3840x2160), that requires over 8.3 million pixels per frame, which explains the sharp FPS decline.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of the system’s capabilities across three resolutions and four settings presets. Starting at 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 299 FPS, which is the highest recorded for this combo. The Medium preset averages 197 FPS, with a minimum of 167 FPS and a maximum of 226 FPS. High settings produce 187 FPS, while Ultra drops to 178 FPS. The gap between Low and every other setting is substantial, with Medium being 34.1% slower, High being 37.5% slower, and Ultra being 40.5% slower. This indicates that the Low preset is uniquely suited to this hardware, allowing the CPU to feed the GPU with enough data to maintain high frame rates.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset still performs admirably with 255 FPS, but the drop from 1080p is noticeable at 14.7%. Medium averages 168 FPS (min 143, max 193), High averages 160 FPS, and Ultra averages 152 FPS. The percentage difference between Low and Medium at 1440p is 34.1%, identical to the 1080p delta, suggesting a consistent scaling factor. The transitions from Medium to High and High to Ultra are smaller, at 4.8% and 5.0% respectively, indicating that the GPU is becoming the limiting factor at these lower frame rates.

At 3840x2160, the performance drops significantly. Low is the only preset that remains competitive, averaging 204 FPS. Medium averages 134 FPS (min 114, max 154), High averages 128 FPS, and Ultra averages 122 FPS. The delta between Low and Medium at 4K is 34.3%, which is consistent with the other resolutions. However, the absolute numbers are much lower, and the gap between Medium, High, and Ultra narrows to just 4.5% and 4.7%. The 4K data shows that the GPU is saturated; even dropping from Medium to Low only yields a 34.3% improvement, whereas at 1080p, the same change yields a 51.8% improvement. This suggests that at 4K, the GPU’s memory bandwidth constraints are the dominant factor, and settings changes have diminishing returns.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is stark and reveals the limiting component. At Low settings, the system produces 299 FPS at 1080p, which falls to 255 FPS at 1440p (a 14.7% drop) and then to 204 FPS at 4K (a 31.8% drop from 1440p). The total decline from 1080p to 4K at Low is 31.8%, which is substantial but still leaves the system in a playable range. However, at higher settings, the scaling is more aggressive. At Medium, the FPS drops from 197 at 1080p to 168 at 1440p (a 14.7% drop) and then to 134 at 4K (a 20.2% drop from 1440p). The total decline from 1080p to 4K at Medium is 32.0%.

The pattern is consistent: the percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is nearly identical across all settings, hovering around 14-15%. This indicates that the resolution increase from 1080p to 1440p is taxing the GPU in a proportional manner. However, the drop from 1440p to 4K is larger, ranging from 20.2% at Medium to 31.8% at Low. This non-linear scaling is a classic sign of a GPU bottleneck. The Arc B370’s pixel rate of 48.00 GPixel/s becomes the limiting factor at 4K, as the GPU must process over four times the pixels of 1080p.

The data suggests that the Ryzen 5 3600 is not the bottleneck at any resolution. The CPU’s strong single-thread performance, as indicated by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2124, is more than sufficient for Valorant’s engine. Instead, the GPU’s shared memory architecture and limited ROP count are the primary constraints. The consistent FPS drops across settings and resolutions point to a component that is overwhelmed by the rendering workload, not a CPU that is starved for data. For players using a 4K monitor, the Low preset is mandatory, and even then, the 204 FPS average is below the 240 FPS that many high-refresh-rate displays target. At 1080p, the system is more balanced, but the recommendation remains to use Low settings to maximize the frame rate ceiling.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for this CPU and GPU combo at 1080p?

A: The Low preset is the best choice, delivering an average of 299 FPS. This is 59.9% higher than Medium (197 FPS), 68.1% higher than High (187 FPS), and 68.1% higher than Ultra (178 FPS). The Low preset is the only one that allows the system to approach the 300 FPS mark.

Q: Is this combo capable of 4K gaming in Valorant?

A: Yes, but only at Low settings, which produces an average of 204 FPS. At Medium, High, or Ultra settings, the FPS drops to between 122 and 134, which may still be playable but is far below the performance seen at lower resolutions.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B370 compare to its nearest rivals in terms of raw GPU performance?

A: The Arc B370 scores 1184 in the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 benchmark. This is within 0.2% of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 (1186), within 0.5% of the ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1190), and 1.4% ahead of the AMD FirePro M2000 (1168). These are all legacy parts, indicating the GPU is not competitive with modern hardware.

Q: Is the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 holding back the system in Valorant?

A: No. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 17035 places it in the 71st percentile of all CPUs, and it is within 0.2% of the Intel Core i7-1260P (17007) and AMD EPYC 7742 (16998). The bottleneck is clearly the GPU, as FPS scales dramatically with resolution and settings.

Q: What is the FPS drop from 1080p to 4K at Low settings?

A: At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 299 at 1080p to 255 at 1440p (a 14.7% drop) and then to 204 at 4K (a 31.8% drop from 1440p). The total decline from 1080p to 4K is 31.8%.

Q: Does the Arc B370 have dedicated VRAM?

A: No. The GPU uses System Shared memory, meaning it relies on the system’s DDR4 RAM with a System Dependent bandwidth. This shared memory configuration is a significant limitation that contributes to the performance drop at higher resolutions and settings.